


Us

by wordswehavesaid



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Team Arrow, Team Flash, Team Flash knows about Oliver's 'death' and return, mentioned Olicity, mentioned one-sided Barry/Iris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5058016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswehavesaid/pseuds/wordswehavesaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver's return from the dead hasn't exactly been met with the warmest reception, but a visit from a certain speedster and his team may change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Us

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Olivarry Week Day 6 prompt: Hurt/Comfort. And also because I've wanted to write a scene like this for a long time. Still feeling cheated we didn't get a Team Flash reaction to the events of Arrow's midseason finale. Hope you all enjoy!

There were a multitude of reasons Oliver hadn’t wanted their counterparts in Central City to learn about any of this. Less people in the know was always his preference; it was an unnecessary burden on them to be brought in; what was the practical _purpose_ of it?

But this is the last thing he’d ever have thought of.

“Caitlin and Cisco caught the first train out, they’ll be here in a few hours,” Barry tells him, after finally releasing him from one of the biggest, tightest hugs he remembers receiving for a long time. Longest lasting, too, considering how many fervent repetitions of, “Thank God you’re not dead—I heard and I just couldn’t believe it—didn’t know what I—thank _God_ ,” the other man had uttered, voice just a little tight for all the relief in his words and breath hot and shaky in Oliver’s ear.

But now he pauses, uncomfortably thrown. “Why are they coming?” There’s nothing his team—if it’s really even his anymore—needs from the pair from S.T.A.R. Labs or vice versa to his knowledge, and Barry’s more than capable of confirming his return from the dead.

But the younger man just looks at him, incredulous. “Really? Oliver, you’re _alive_. We thought you’d died, but you didn’t, so why wouldn’t I—we—want to come see you? I mean this is the kind of thing you celebrate!”

No one in Starling has made any mention of wanting to. He thinks of the way Diggle and Roy and Laurel have continued to fight in his absence, to grow as heroes in spite of him, and how Felicity can hardly stand to be around him anymore. Yet Barry’s run all this way, six-hundred miles. Oliver shakes his head. “I really don’t need—”

“A party? Well too bad, you’re getting one. You came back from the dead, we’re not _not_ having a party for that.” Barry looks determined and pleased with himself in the face of Oliver’s faltering. Yet for a moment his blood runs cold as he remembers _Sara, when you come back from the dead you get a party_.

But now Barry’s taking in his silence and his less than enthusiastic expression and he hesitantly offers, “It doesn’t have to be anything major. We could grab a table in your sister’s club, have a few drinks. Just let me buy the first round? I just figure, we could all use something to celebrate after Christmas...didn’t go so great. And I can’t think of anything more worth celebrating.”

He’s finished with an honest, open smile, the kind that Oliver can’t ever seem to just ignore from Barry. He should, he really should.

Instead he replies, “No reason to make Caitlin and Cisco waste train tickets. And if it’s my party, Barry, I’m not buying _any_ rounds.”

The other vigilante laughs, then gives an affirming nod. “Deal.”

He doesn’t know what Team Flash does to convince everyone, but come Caitlin and Cisco’s arrival, Dig and Roy, Thea and Laurel, and even Felicity are at the club. She gives him a smile, still a little pained despite the complete lack of even a mention of Merlyn and he figures he should expect that. Her strict morals, and the exacting way she holds him up against them, are something he needs, something that’s always endeared her to him as much as it’s driven her from him.

And the evening isn’t all glum musings and quiet longing. He’s at least a little entertained by Cisco’s ongoing attempts to impress both Thea and Laurel, and is admittedly more than surprised to note that the engineer seems to be having more success with the latter. She really has changed; they all have.

But talk eventually turns to more personal affairs. Caitlin practically bubbles with excitement over the scant details John can provide about his upcoming remarriage to Lyla, which he realizes with some guilt has probably been indefinitely postponed until recently due to his actions. The doctor has news of her own to share; her fiancé has been discovered alive, another metahuman in fact. The exact science is hard for him to grasp but a fascinated Felicity is doing her best to keep up, and makes the remark that _of course_ Ray would love to learn about Firestorm. Which starts the topic of her new relationship.

He doesn’t return Dig’s sympathetic glance, just quietly excuses himself to the restroom but makes for first the bar for another bottle and then the foundry instead. But he’s momentarily surprised out of his rapidly souring mood to discover he hasn’t found the place empty.

Barry’s wheeled a chair over to sit and gaze contemplatively at the suits in their individual cases, looking somehow more still than Oliver can ever remember seeing him. It seems wrong, and what’s worse is he’s wracking his brain trying to recall when the younger man had slipped off. Why had he done it, why hadn’t Oliver immediately noticed, and why does that bother him so much?

“You know,” he starts, more to announce his presence than anything, and comes down the stairs to the main floor, “the get-together upstairs was your idea.”

Barry’s swiveled the chair around to face him, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck in a nervous habit that’s always been easy for him to read. “I’d drag the party down if I stuck around. High-speed metabolism means I can’t get drunk.”

Oh. Oliver considers the bottle in his hand. “Guess I don’t have to offer to share, then.”

Barry chuckles, drops his hand and seems to sink more fully into the chair, tired. “Nah, go for it.” He doesn’t question why Oliver’s left the party, doesn’t suggest he head back to it like he wants to be left alone. And, settling on the edge of the table closest to the Central vigilante, he realizes despite coming down here he doesn’t much want to be alone either. Or he might as well have stayed up in the club.

He takes a swig, casts around for something to say. Small talk is a skill that no longer comes easily to him, he’s rarely comfortable enough to try. “It sounds like you’ve been pretty busy from what Cisco and Caitlin are saying.”

The man looks away for a moment, gives a humble shrug. “Just doing the best I can. But you,” that earnest gaze is reaffixed up at him on his perch above the other, “I mean things have been crazy up here haven’t they? I don’t know how you do it.”

“I didn’t,” is his short answer. “The others did.”

Barry doesn’t seem to be dissuaded, however. “Well yeah, of course. Joe and STAR, I couldn’t do anything without them. But when you came back you basically ended that uprising in the Glades. I saw it on the news, after. Oliver,” and here, Barry pushes up from the chair slightly, like he’s tempted to get on his feet for this, “you know I’m always here, right? If something like that happens again, I’d want to help. I wish I’d known…but we haven’t really heard from you guys since Felicity called to tell us about you being, uh, dead.”

He can taste the bitter sting of the alcohol on his tongue when he takes another pull from the bottle, wants to harness it and tell Barry that, thanks, but he’s clearly got enough helpers in Starling as it is, so many that he’s practically rendered redundant and shouldn’t have bothered coming back since all he’s seemed to do is bring more problems in his wake.

But that wouldn’t be fair. Not to Barry, not when he really means he just wants to help _Oliver_ , laying himself bare for approval with a hard line to his shoulders that says _either way, I’ll stand with you_.

So a corner of his mouth lifts in something of a smile, gentle, as he replies, “That wasn’t your fault.”

Again, his words seem to put the other man at ease somehow; he relaxes, smiles gratefully, trustingly up at him. It looks like how his hug felt.

And Barry seems to want to give something back, for he continues, “Felicity was really upset. When she called, I mean. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her so—but she seems a lot happier.” It’s meant to be encouraging, hopeful, and he tries to remember back over a year ago when all he’d wanted to consider this man was a rival. It seems unnatural now.

He feels more defeated than angry as he says, “That probably has to do with her boyfriend.”

Hazel eyes widen in shock before an embarrassed flush rises in the other’s cheeks, the tips of his ears, down his neck. That hand is raised again to the back of his head, ruffling the shorter strands. “I didn’t know she’d started dating someone else. I thought she…I’m really sorry, Oliver.”

He hates having to hammer this point home to the younger man, but he might as well learn from Oliver’s mistakes. “It’s the way it is. Guys like us—”

“I know,” Barry interrupts, not mad or like he doesn’t want to hear it, but like he really, truly does. “I told Iris anyway.”

 _Christmas didn’t go so great_. Only now does he consider Barry wasn’t just talking about Oliver’s. He closes his eyes against the wave of empathy for the other man, near overwhelming, before opening them again to ask, “How did she take it?”

“She moved in with Eddie last month.” Barry’s gaze is fixed on the floor and a smile, bitter and awful on his face, curls his lips. “She really loves him. And that’s—he’s good for her. She’s happier with him.”

“Felicity’s happier with Ray.” He never thought he’d be able to say it aloud, and he doesn’t think he ever will again. Not to anyone else. “She deserves that.”

Barry deserves someone who’s good for him, too, he’d always thought when looking at his young, smiling face. So much like Felicity, and in many ways he’d dismissed him for it at first. But now…seeing the loss and anger and despair deep in his eyes, a mirror of Oliver’s own, he realizes just how much Barry Allen is like him.

He passes the bottle over before he even thinks about it, and for all the good it’ll do the other vigilante greedily drains what’s left, wipes his mouth on the back of his sleeve. He chuckles, and it’s just as dark as his smile. “Thanks for sharing.”

“Anytime.”

“Guys like us, huh?” And at the least there’s something warmer in the other man’s look when he meets Oliver’s eyes. Comradeship, maybe, a sense of belonging with _someone_ in the world just the littlest bit. If he gets to be part of an ‘us’, he’s glad it’s with Barry. He’s just him with Barry, somehow.

“Yeah, us,” he affirms, smiling truly for what seems the first time since he came back.

“So who _do_ we get, Oliver?” It’s such a simple question, for all its quiet ache and desperation, in his voice and in his knuckles clenched white around the neck of the empty bottle. He wishes, in this moment when Barry’s at his most low, he had the answer, the words to comfort him that would spill from his mouth like the other man had before, something that would carry him through the toughest struggles and the darkest battles. But all he can think is, _I don’t want to be a woman you love_.

Still Barry’s watching him, waiting for an answer. This man who’s so open and trusting and _bright_ despite all their shared darkness that Oliver doesn’t see how anyone _couldn’t_ love him. Yet for whatever reason he’s been forced to turn to him.

Looking to him, eyes dropping for just the briefest moment, to Oliver’s lips…

They feel suddenly dry, and he wets them with his tongue under a watchful gaze. His fingers twitch. He takes a steadying breath, thinks how messed up and wrong it would be for him to just go along with this moment no matter how easy—Barry _does_ deserve better, better than this—and he reaches out to gently tug the bottle from the other’s grasp.

But his other hand cups the back of the man’s head and tilts it to just such an angle that their lips slot together when he leans in.

He expects alarm bells to go off in his head, the clack of teeth, one or the both of them to think, _this is weird_ , and pull away—not this. Not the way they both seem to melt into this tender brush of a kiss, neither fighting nor shrinking away. Barry’s pressing up from the chair into him, meeting him in the middle as his eyes flutter closed and his mouth opens eagerly even though Oliver probably tastes of nothing but pizza and tequila, but _oh_.

His fingers have been carding through brown hair, smooth and soft against his callused skin, and he grips it tight with a groan deep in his chest as his tongue laps up every last bit of _Barry_ he can get. A whimper escapes the younger man while a shiver wracks his leaner frame, and Oliver wonders if this is everything he’s been longing for too, two hands suddenly framing his face, pulling him down closer, harder—

The bottle crashes to the floor and shatters, forgotten by both of them. They break apart with a jolt.

Barry’s eyes, wide though the hazel is a barely visible ring around his pupils, dart between him and the scattered shards, his chest heaving like he’d just run to Central and back again, cheeks stained a rosy hue while his lips remain deep red, kiss-swollen and puckered and ready to pick up right where they’d left off.

The thundering of his heart in his chest says Oliver might be in much the same position. He clears his throat and says in a voice far too deep and husky for this, “I’ll get the glass.”

But he barely has time to get fully to his feet before there’s a rush of wind and color and the glass is gone, Barry suddenly there and pressing him back against the table’s edge.

“I got it.”

And somehow he’s grinning into the kiss the other man guides him into.

Guys like them might have lost their chances with the girls in their lives, but Oliver thinks with Barry…he could be ok with what he’s got.


End file.
